1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, such as a printer, a facsimile machine, or a multifunction peripheral, a method of controlling the same, and a storage medium, and more particularly to a preview function of the image forming apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, from an environmental viewpoint, paperless work has been promoted e.g. in offices. For this reason, an image forming apparatus, such as a multifunction peripheral, is equipped with a preview function so as to reduce print errors even when minimum necessary sheets are printed.
For such a preview function, there has been proposed a technique for displaying characters and graphics included in an image to be printed on a display section in the same size as when the image is printed on a sheet, so as to enable the user to check the image size before printing (see e.g. Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-166763). This preview will be hereinafter referred to as “real-size preview”.
The real-size preview described in the above-mentioned Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-166763 makes it possible to check the size of characters and graphics before printing, and hence it is possible to prevent occurrence of a print error of different sizes of characters and graphics from those intended by the user, which used to be recognized after printing.
On the other hand, the image forming apparatus is capable of setting so-called aggregation printing in which a plurality of pages are collectively printed by combining the pages into a single page, so as to save sheets and toner. When aggregation printing is executed, the page size is reduced from the size before aggregation. Therefore, to check the sizes of characters and the like to be printed on a sheet by aggregation printing in advance, it is necessary to perform real-size preview of an image in the same size as printed on a sheet by aggregation printing, i.e. in the size of characters and graphics after aggregation.
As mentioned above, a print error of different sizes of characters and graphics from those intended by the user is often caused by print settings made by the user. Therefore, it is effective to additionally execute the above-mentioned real-size preview, when a print setting is made which involves changing the sizes of printed characters and graphics from the sizes of the same on an original as in the case of the above-mentioned aggregation printing.
However, there is a problem that the user often fails to recognize a change in the size of characters caused by the print settings.